During my Spiritual Formation class at my undergrad, I was required to keep a journal on a specific spiritual discipline and at the end of the semester write a paper describing the journey. I chose prayer and this was the result. Note: I reference Dietrich Bonhoeffer’s Life Together which you should read immediately if you haven’t. There are also some prayer practices I reference that my teacher would have been familiar with, but that might not be the case here. I am open for questioning though.
Prayer is
Prayer is through and in Jesus Christ. Prayer cannot be properly defined as a what before it is defined as a who. When learning to pray as a child, I was taught that the proper way to end a prayer is to use the phrase “in the name of Jesus.” This is the very foundation of Christian prayer. “If you remain in me, and my words remain in you, ask whatever you wish, and it will be given you” (John 15:7). It is only through Jesus that our prayers our heard; it is only through his becoming a man, being obedient to death, and becoming our great heavenly high priest that we can “approach the throne of grace with confidence, so that we may receive mercy and find grace in our time of need” (Hebrews 4: 16). Bonhoeffer is certainly correct in saying that our prayers “are certainly heard and answered in Jesus Christ.” Only when prayer is truly rooted in Jesus Christ and his work can prayer truly be called prayer.
Prayer is discovering and receiving God’s will. This is the what of prayer. Prayer is not our working in order to try to manipulate God. Prayer is not simply communication with God, although that is a large part of prayer. Prayer is finding the heart’s true calling. Augustine famously stated that “our heart is restless until it rests in you.” Our true purpose is found in the Garden of Eden. Man and woman lived both in full communion with each other and full communion with God. And they were fully obedient to God’s will. Only when they chose to abandon that obedience did they lose their unity with God. Only when sin entered the world did the human heart become restless. Yet through Jesus’ obedience we can now live in God’s purposes again. “We were therefore buried with him through baptism into death in order that, just as Christ was raised from the dead through the glory of the Father, we too may have life” (Romans 6:4). This new life we have in Christ is one free from sin, a life that is rooted in replacing our own will with the Father’s. In our states of imperfection, “We do not know what we ought to pray for” (Romans 8:26b). In order that we may become one with the Father, Jesus teaches us the true meaning of prayer.
Our Father in heaven, hallowed be your name, your kingdom come, your will be done on earth as it is in heaven. Give us today our daily bread. Forgive us our debts, as we also have forgiven our debtors. And lead us not into temptation, but deliver us from the evil one. For yours is the kingdom and the power and the glory forever. Amen.This prayer is rooted in the will of the Father. Five out of the seven petitions found in the prayer are directly related to God’s supremacy and his will. This prayer tells us that the foundation of prayer is the accepting of God’s will into our own lives. This acceptance of God’s will require us to sacrifice our own will. We must obey Jesus when he said “If anyone would come after me, he must deny himself and take up his cross and follow me” (Mark 8:34).
Prayer is rooted in the Scriptures. Since we know the what that is prayer, it is time to go back to the where. Bonhoeffer is exactly right that prayer evolves out of the meditation on Scripture. By praying based on the Scriptures, or even praying the Scriptures themselves, we can be sure that we be sure that our prayers are in accordance with God’s will. And we know that are prayer is through Jesus Christ, “because God’s Word has found fulfillment in Jesus Christ.” And the Scriptures are the most pure form of God’s will to which we have access. Again Bonhoeffer can see the intimate connection of Prayer and scripture; “Prayer means nothing else but the readiness and willingness to receive and appropriate the Word, and what is more, to accept it in one’s personal situation, particular tasks, decisions, sins, and temptations.” Praying the Scriptures is the heart of the Lectio Divina. The meditation provides us with an understanding of God and his wills and purposes; the contemplation gives us a love and joyful obedience to the Scriptures. By praying Scripture, we completely take our own selfishness out of the equation, and we come to the realization, as Bonhoeffer did, that it is no longer we who are praying but Christ. This is not only because of the perfect submission to God’s will found in praying the Scriptures, but also because of the sheer scope of the prayers. The Scriptures take us out of the selfish individualism in which we are entrapped and gives to us the impossibly broad concern of God’s will. Since it is so impossible, it is impossible for humans to sincerely will what God wills without help; that help is to be found in letting Jesus pray through us in the Scriptures. And so we come full circle; prayer should be through Jesus Christ, be a submission to the will of God, and be based in the Scripture which is actually a prayer through Jesus Christ.
Prayer is petitionary. As shown through the Lord’s Prayer, prayer should be, in most instances, in the form of petition. Petition comes out of true humbleness. It is by humbleness that we realize that indeed we do not have what is truly needed in our lives. It is humbleness that will protect us from the pride in trying to manipulate God to give us what we want. This is not to say that we do not know the outcome of the prayer. “Ask and it shall be given to you; seek and you will find; know and the door will be opened unto you” (Matthew 7:7). We know that all of God’s promises are “‘Yes’ in Christ” (2 Corinthians 1:20), and so we can boldly make our petitions to God. However, these petitions do not originate out of our own selfish desires. For it is not everyone to whom God will give what they wish; it is those who are abiding in God’s will. And so our petitions become all about God and his purposes. Our petitions become those in the Lord’s Prayer. Only then, when we petition for the conforming of our will to God’s, can we truly know what else to petition for; then, when it becomes clear what God’s will is in the situation, we can truly pray with the confidence that God will give us whatever we ask for.
Prayer is intercessory. We are commanded to love our brothers, and the greatest service we can do for them is to petition God on behalf of them. Intercession gives us accountability in the fact that we must pursue prayer for them in the right way. As it is an act of goodwill, we pray for the other person’s sake and not our own. This leads us away from the vain self-centered prayers of “change them, Lord” and leads us into the godly prayer of lifting up the other person into God’s will. Selfless prayer is only possible when we see the other person and ourselves as they are in Christ’s eye, sinners in need of grace. With the knowledge that we are sinful, it will kill off all the desire to be judgmental in our prayer life; with the knowledge that the other person is sinful in need of grace, we can joyfully lift them up into God’s loving embrace.
Prayer is regular. The Benedictine Monks pray communally seven times a day. The Divine Office prays specifically different things at traditionally important times of the day. These ancient and tested methods of prayer bring out the importance of the rhythm of the day. Prayer becomes most effective when prayed in accordance with this rhythm. This is not to do with some magical quality that these hours have on our spirituality, but it has everything to do with humanity’s innate qualities. These qualities dictate that we function better in cycles, and so our lives become governed by a great cycle of prayer. And by positioning ourselves in this cycle, we live our life to the rhythm of submission to God’s will.
Prayer is continuous. It is commanded that we “pray continually.” (1 Thessalonians 5:17). This command seems less impossible when we have a proper view of prayer. When the prayer is the continual submission of our own will to God’s will, it is easy to see how this is possible, even necessary, in the Christian life. With this attitude, everything we do becomes prayer. Work becomes our calling where the will of God becomes acted out in living. In this way there becomes no difference between the command of “pray continually” and the command of “be perfect” (Matthew 5:48). Prayer is where we find the perfection of God. The continual conforming to the will of God will necessarily become the perfection that is commanded of us.
Prayer is simple. Before, and still now, it has been easy for me to put off the reality and necessity of prayer by claiming the difficulty that comes with a disciplined prayer life. However, prayer’s simpleness makes it easy to begin praying. There is difficulty. We are humans; we probably will not pray as much as we should. However, when one has a rightly attitude about prayer, when one wants recognizes prayer as coming into the will of God, all excuses fall away and we are left with the conviction and need to pray.
Justified Beliefs 